Makambe K Simamba brings her show ‘Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers’ to Tarragon Theatre

“I call the piece a prayer for Black life,” says Makambe K Simamba of her one-person show “Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers.”

The play’s central character is a 17-year-old Black youth named Slimm, who has just arrived in the afterlife. Simamba plays Slimm and other characters including his parents, and the story of how he lived and lost his life unfolds.

“Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers” had its world premiere in Toronto in 2019, in a b current production at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, for which Simamba won two Dora awards: for best performance by an individual, and best play.

A new co-production from Tarragon Theatre and Black Theatre Workshop based on that staging plays live at Tarragon through April 10 (with digital performances from March 22-April 10), and then live in the Studio Theatre at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton from April 26-May 7. As before, the show is directed by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard.

While the production’s Doras were won in the awards’ Theatre for Young Audiences division, this version is being marketed for general audiences. All are welcome, said Simamba, but “Black teens continue to be my main audience for the show … The youth are the best, they’re going to take over the world, and they’re supersmart.”

Simamba was born in Zambia and lived with her family in various places around the Caribbean before coming to Canada for theatre school. She graduated from the University of Lethbridge and now is based in Toronto; her family lives in Brampton.

This experience of mobility fed her desire to create theatre.

“There was such a culture shock going from an African country to a Caribbean country,” she said. This helped her “start to appreciate the nuance and beauty of different Black experiences.”

She started to think about making “Our Fathers” in 2013 around the time the Black Lives Matter movement ignited — but at that point she didn’t feel “I was the writer I needed to be to say what I wanted to say.” It was during a 2016 performance intensive in Calgary that she started to put the work on its feet, in the form of a 10-minute solo piece.

Performing it herself and using a highly physical vocabulary, she found, was central to how she wanted to deliver the material.

“In theatre school, we learned a very European and American-ish, very white-centric-based model of creation and storytelling,” she said. “There were a lot of really incredible things that I got from that, but I felt like within myself … there was just so much information in my body that I didn’t really get to always use through the medium of theatre.”

She’s returned to the show in the context of the ongoing global racial reckoning following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. That passage of time and history is making a difference, she said. “It’s not so much that I feel differently about the work, but it’s interesting to see the different awareness towards the work, and the different recognition that non-Black folks are now having to be able to access the story,” she said.

Personally, as well, the show is a changed experience for her. When she first started making it, she was in her mid-20s, so the material “didn’t seem that far away from me,” she said. “Being in my early 30s now, it just sits differently in my body.”

“This respectfully and artfully crafted work is as urgent as ever,” said Tarragon’s artistic director Mike Payette. “At the core, it is a calling for community, reflection, and reclamation through the lens of the beautiful lyricism, and care of Makambe’s words and spirit.”

For tickets to the Tarragon in-person and digital performances: tarragontheatre.com and 416-531-1827. For tickets at Theatre Aquarius: theatreaquarius.org and 905-522-7529.

Karen Fricker is a Toronto-based theatre critic and a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @KarenFricker2